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Looking back: The Puyallup Land Claims Settlement

As a consumer specialist, I open everything that comes in mail. I’m looking to see if a small financial detail may be revealed or if I’ll find a story idea.

When I opened the invitation-looking type envelope, I was surprised to learn I’d been invited to a forum celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Puyallup Indian Land Claims Settlement at the Hotel Murano in Tacoma Sept. 22 from 8:30 a.m. to 11 a.m.

I decided to attend.

When I worked for the state Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development, I’d been coordinator of the state agency effort to develop a list of items the state wanted to have included in the final contract for the settlement.

The agreement was a success, said Dillon, and it will continue to be successful.

Inouye, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs at that time, said he came to Washington state 13 times to help with the negotiations. On one trip, he acted as a “messenger boy” going between the Indian group on the second floor and the non-Indians on the fifth, he said, adding he went up and down 21 times.

Inouye said he wanted to take on a tough problem in Indian Country so that tribes would know that he, as the new chairman of the committee, was sincere in his desire to assist them.

About the $77 million that the federal government appropriated for the settlement, Inouye said, “I got my training from [Senator Warren G.] Magnuson.”

Dicks said he thinks about what would have happened if the settlement hadn’t been adopted.

In the 1980s, the small Puyallup Tribe claimed that it owned the land under much of downtown Tacoma, the Port of Tacoma, Fife, and Puyallup. It contended that much of its tribal lands had been taken from it through sales, swindles, and murders.

A federal appeals court ruled in 1983 in the tribe’s favor, awarding 12.5 acres of the Port of Tacoma to the tribe. The tribe’s further claims to more land put a cloud on the title of any firms that wanted to expand and was seen as a threat to the growth of the Port of Tacoma.

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate..